Labor Day has come and gone, which means summer is officially over.
I have one question: Did anybody notice?
I don’t mean the temperature. Here in Florida, summer will continue until approximately Thanksgiving, followed by six pleasant afternoons in January before we start the whole thing again.
I mean summer.
The summer we used to have.
The one with a beginning and an ending. The one populated by friends, terrible summer jobs, questionable decisions, trips to the beach, nights at the movies and, if you were lucky, a song that somehow attached itself to those three months forever.
The ’80s were full of those songs.
Some were literally about summer: Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69” and Y&T’s “Summertime Girls.” Others had nothing to do with summer but happened to rule the radio, MTV or movie theaters at exactly the right moment.
So before we ask whatever happened to the great summer song, let’s remember some of the best summer songs the 1980s gave us.
25 of the best ’80s summer songs
A disclaimer before someone starts yelling at me on Facebook: This isn’t a scientific ranking.
These are songs that either evoke summer directly or became part of the soundtrack of summer during the 1980s. Billboard’s biggest summer hits included songs such as “Jessie’s Girl,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Every Breath You Take,” “When Doves Cry,” “Shout,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Alone,” “Roll With It” and “Right Here Waiting.” But a summer song doesn’t have to be the song that sold the most records between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Sometimes your memory gets the deciding vote.
1. “Cruel Summer” — Bananarama
If we’re choosing the definitive ’80s summer song, this has a pretty convincing case.
And unlike most sunny summer anthems, “Cruel Summer” isn’t particularly happy. It’s hot. It’s lonely. Your friends are gone. Your relationship isn’t going well.
In other words, it’s summer for people who aren’t appearing in a beer commercial.
The song became even more permanently connected to the season when it appeared in The Karate Kid in 1984.
2. “Vacation” — The Go-Go’s
Few bands sounded more like summer than the Go-Go’s, and in 1982 they didn’t bother being subtle about it.
“Vacation” has everything: escape, a summer romance, Belinda Carlisle and a music video featuring the band on water skis.
Frankly, I’m not sure what else you people want.
3. “The Boys of Summer” — Don Henley
Perhaps the greatest summer song is actually about what happens when summer is gone.
“The Boys of Summer” is filled with memory, regret, lost love and the realization that you can’t go back.
Which means at 20, it’s a really good song.
At 59, it’s attempted murder.
4. “Summer of ’69” — Bryan Adams
Released in 1985, “Summer of ’69” is essentially four minutes of concentrated nostalgia: first bands, first love and the conviction that those days would last forever.
They don’t. That’s why the song does.
5. “Walking on Sunshine” — Katrina and the Waves
There is no melancholy here.
No wistful remembrance of lost youth.
Just horns, guitars and a level of happiness that would be suspicious in almost any other setting.
“Walking on Sunshine” became a Top 10 hit in the United States in 1985 and has spent the decades since being deployed whenever a movie, TV show or commercial needs to communicate: EVERYTHING IS GREAT NOW.
6. “Summertime Girls” — Y&T
This is my pick.
Not the biggest hit on this list. Not even close.
“Summertime Girls” peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985.
Don’t care.
From the opening guitar to its wonderfully ridiculous video, Y&T created three-plus minutes that sound exactly like summer in the middle of the ’80s.
And that’s an important distinction.
The biggest song of summer isn’t necessarily your summer song.
7. “Suddenly Last Summer” — The Motels
Here’s another one for those of us who prefer our summer nostalgia with just a little emotional damage.
The Motels’ 1983 hit doesn’t celebrate summer so much as capture the strange sadness of realizing it’s ending.
Which, come to think of it, is pretty much the point of this entire article.
8. “Danger Zone” — Kenny Loggins
You could barely escape Top Gun in the summer of 1986, and why would you have tried?
“Take My Breath Away” supplied the romance.
“Danger Zone” supplied the motorcycles, aircraft carriers, aviator sunglasses and sudden urge to do something inadvisable at high speed.
9. “Kokomo” — The Beach Boys
By 1988, the band most synonymous with American summer somehow managed to create another massive summer-adjacent hit.
“Kokomo” came from the Cocktail soundtrack and sold us an imaginary tropical destination where there were apparently no jobs, mortgages or Monday morning meetings.
I would still like directions.
10. “Hot in the City” — Billy Idol
Summer wasn’t always beaches and palm trees.
Sometimes it was pavement radiating heat at 10 p.m.
Billy Idol gave us that summer song.
11. “Holiday Road” — Lindsey Buckingham
You cannot hear this song without wanting to load the family into a station wagon and begin a cross-country journey that will almost certainly result in multiple felonies.
Thank you, National Lampoon’s Vacation.
12. “Endless Summer Nights” — Richard Marx
Released on Marx’s 1987 debut album, “Endless Summer Nights” belongs to another great summer-song category: remembering a romance that apparently was much better because it happened when everyone was sweating.
13. “Magic” — The Cars
The Cars’ 1984 hit doesn’t have “summer” in the title, but Ric Ocasek walking on water in a swimming pool while people in bathing suits stare at him qualifies it for membership.
Also, it’s “Magic.” Case closed.
14. “When Doves Cry” — Prince
Now we’re getting into another kind of summer song.
“When Doves Cry” isn’t about summer.
It owned one.
Prince’s Purple Rain phenomenon was everywhere during the summer of 1984, and “When Doves Cry” spent five weeks at No. 1.
For millions of people, that’s enough to permanently connect those opening guitar notes to that summer.
15. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” — Tears for Fears
Few records sound better with a car window down.
The song reached No. 1 in June 1985, just as one of the decade’s greatest pop summers was getting underway.
16. “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” — John Parr
Released in 1985 and attached to one of the decade’s most aggressively ’80s movies, John Parr’s anthem is another example of something the decade did exceptionally well:
Summer movie + enormous theme song = unavoidable cultural event.
17. “Papa Don’t Preach” — Madonna
Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” was Billboard’s biggest song of the summer of 1986.
And by this point, Madonna wasn’t merely having hits. She was part of the atmosphere.
You didn’t decide whether Madonna would be part of your summer.
Madonna decided.
18. “Sledgehammer” — Peter Gabriel
Another song that was absolutely unavoidable in 1986, helped considerably by one of the most memorable videos MTV ever put into heavy rotation.
And this brings us to my summer.
19. “Invisible Touch” — Genesis
If we’re talking about my summer song, this is it.
“Summertime Girls” might be my quintessential summer song of the decade.
But “Invisible Touch” belongs to one particular summer.
More on that in a minute.
20. “Jessie’s Girl” — Rick Springfield
“Jessie’s Girl” topped Billboard’s summer tally for 1981.
It also demonstrates the fundamental law of summer music: a song doesn’t need to mention beaches, sunshine or vacations if everyone is hearing it at exactly the same time.
21. “Eye of the Tiger” — Survivor
The summer of 1982 belonged to Rocky III, Survivor and millions of Americans suddenly believing that jogging while punching the air constituted a legitimate fitness program.
22. “Every Breath You Take” — The Police
Dark subject matter.
Beautiful record.
Absolutely gigantic summer hit.
Billboard identifies it as the defining summer hit of 1983.
Again: Summer songs don’t have to be happy.
23. “Shout” — Tears for Fears
The summer of 1985 was absurdly good for pop music, and “Shout” ended up atop Billboard’s summer ranking for the year.
Tears for Fears had already given us “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Apparently they weren’t finished.
24. “Alone” — Heart
Heart’s massive power ballad topped Billboard’s summer list for 1987.
Proof that sometimes the perfect summer song involves absolutely no summer imagery whatsoever.
Just Ann Wilson obliterating everyone within a three-mile radius.
25. “Roll With It” — Steve Winwood
The biggest summer hit of 1988 according to Billboard, “Roll With It” spent four weeks at No. 1 and sounded tailor-made for a car radio.
Which brings us to the bigger question.
What made ’80s summer songs different?
Part of the answer is how we consumed music.
Radio mattered.
MTV mattered.
Movie soundtracks mattered enormously.
A hit didn’t merely appear in your personalized feed because an algorithm thought you might enjoy it. The same songs followed everybody around.
You heard them in the car.
At the beach.
At the mall.
At a party.
Coming out of somebody’s boombox.
Playing before the movie started.
On MTV when you got home.
Then you’d buy the 45 or the album. Or you’d wait for the song to come on the radio and record it onto a cassette, usually with the DJ talking over the first seven seconds because apparently they enjoyed making teenagers miserable.
Friends made mixtapes for friends.
Our choices were more limited.
I’m beginning to think that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.
The summer of 1986
If you ask me to choose one summer from the entire decade, there’s no contest.
It was the only summer I came home from college.
I worked at Pik A Flik, a video rental store, which might be the most ’80s sentence I’ve ever written.
My band, Epic Trash, played little parties all summer. We found creative ways to procure beer because we weren’t old enough to legally buy it. I’m sure none of those methods would survive careful legal scrutiny today, so we’ll leave it there.
We hung out with friends.
We got into movies for free because somebody we knew worked at the theater.
We listened to the radio and records.
Friends made mixtapes for friends.
And the album I couldn’t stop playing was Genesis’ Invisible Touch.
The album arrived in June 1986. Its title track reached No. 1 in July.
And consider what else was around it that summer: Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” Janet Jackson’s “Nasty.” Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.” Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years.” Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach.”
That’s not a playlist.
That’s a time machine.
But I didn’t just play the Genesis singles.
I wore out that album over the following year, especially songs like “Domino” and the instrumental “The Brazilian.”
Those are the songs that can still unexpectedly send me back.
That’s another thing we used to do: live with an album long enough that the songs nobody played on the radio became our songs.
Do we still have songs of the summer?
Of course we do. Every generation gets its summer hits. Young people today are undoubtedly attaching songs to first loves, vacations, road trips, terrible jobs and questionable decisions just as we did. And I’m reluctant to blame everything on Spotify, streaming or the demise of MTV.
Because I’ve developed another theory about whatever happened to the summer song.
We got old.
I hate this explanation, mostly because it has the unfortunate quality of being true.
Maybe what disappeared wasn’t the summer song
When you’re young, summer is a destination.
School ends. You come home from college. Friends who have scattered suddenly reappear. You get a summer job knowing you’re probably going to quit it in a few months. There are vacations and parties and nights when nobody seems particularly concerned about what time it is.
Summer has boundaries. And because it has boundaries, you notice it. Then you grow up. There isn’t a final bell in May anymore. Nobody hands you three months and says, “See you in the fall.”
Monday in July looks suspiciously like Monday in February. You work. You pay bills. You mow the lawn. You make dentist appointments. You complain about the electric bill because apparently your father has somehow taken possession of your body.
One day you notice it’s June. Then somebody puts pumpkins in the grocery store.
Summer’s over. What the hell happened?
Why ’80s summer songs still mean so much
Maybe that’s why the best summer songs of the ’80s have become so powerful for those of us who grew up with them. They’re not just songs anymore. They’re storage devices.
A few notes can contain an entire place. A person. A car. A smell. A movie theater. A ridiculous shirt you thought looked fantastic. A version of yourself.
I can put on “Invisible Touch” today and hear a very good Genesis song. But somewhere underneath it, I can also hear the summer of 1986.
Pik A Flik. Epic Trash. Cheap parties. Free movies. Mixtapes. Friends. Somebody working out the beer situation.
And that wonderful, completely unearned confidence you have at 20 years old that there will always be another summer exactly like this one.
There wasn’t. That’s the part nobody tells you.
There would be other summers, of course. Great ones. Vacations. Weddings. Careers. Adventures. Eventually there would even be a podcast devoted to endlessly talking about the decade I was living through without realizing how much I’d someday miss it.
But there would never be that summer again. So maybe we haven’t really lost the summer song.
Maybe the reason those songs from the ’80s mean so much to us now is that they can still do something the calendar can’t.
They can give summer back to us. Put the needle down. Press play. Turn it up. For four minutes, I’m 20 years old again.
Epic Trash has a party to play tonight. Somebody can get us into the movies for free. Genesis is on the radio.
And summer still has weeks left.